“Almost every child subconsciously sees their room as the safest place. That is where they express their innermost thoughts and hopes most purely,” says Sofia Simeonova. The young photographer has presented her exhibition The Room in You, which quite literally opens the door between generations.
Eighteen-year-old Sofia steps into the homes of her peers with her camera to show what their most personal place looks like—their own room. Most of them are strangers to her, and her only condition is that their little corner must not be specially tidied up for the photos, but look the way it does every day.
So what does the most personal space of young people look like today?
Thoughts Kept in a Room
As psychologist Ani Vladimirova says, one of our biggest problems as a society is the gulf between different groups, most clearly embodied by the one between generations.
This year Sofia finished high school. The idea for her project came at the end of two years of almost nonstop online learning, which turned out to be a serious challenge for students and teachers alike. “We were all spending so much time in our rooms, doing everything we used to do outside.” Around that time she came across the project of American photographer Adrienne Salinger, who in the 1990s went into young people’s homes to show their true, colorful nature, so different from the usual dry, idealized portraits.
The girl decided to show the same picture, only this time of her peers from the new millennium. Quite a few people quickly answered her call; she visited and photographed 16 rooms, and from them chose 32 shots for the exhibition.
“It was very interesting to enter the personal space of someone you don’t know, and for that to be your first meeting with them,” Sofia says. With every new meeting she became more convinced that a room truly expresses the character of the person who lives in it.
The Familiar Room
“Seeing how their story is reflected in the environment where they spend so much time made me realize once again how many things we put up as barriers and masks to protect ourselves from others. How rarely we manage to reach that deep point where a person is pure and real.”
Contrary to expectations, the rooms are not all that full of electronic devices. There are laptops and phones, but also… a surprising number of books. Of course, Sofia clearly stumbled upon an unrepresentative sample in that sense, but her ambition is to continue with a much wider circle of young people.
“The girls are tidier, while the boys go to one of two extremes—either total chaos or spotlessly clean, without a single unnecessary thing,” the photographer says. While it used to be fashionable to stick posters of singers and actors on the walls, today that is more of a vintage thing. What is fashionable, though, is putting up vinyl records—another interesting bridge between generations.
“The objects in the rooms are closely tied to people’s interests; nothing is there by chance. Books, incense sticks, flowers. One girl who plays in a band had three guitars, and each of them had a name,” Sofia says.
Stay in Your Room
In a month she leaves to study in France, where she will spend the first year learning the language, and in the second she plans to specialize in psychology. For her, photography is not an end in itself, but an attempt to get to know people and herself better.
And to look for the door between generations. Which often turns out to be precisely the door behind which parents are not allowed. Many of these doors bear signs like “Exit for Parents,” and perhaps her photos are a chance for fathers and mothers to peek inside.
To Sofia this is normal, because young people need freedom. She is grateful to her own parents “because they gave me a room where they never told me, ‘Don’t write on the wall, don’t stick that up.’ I had complete freedom to do whatever I wanted, and that helped me a lot to build a personal space that reminds me who I am and helps me grow as a person.”
Does she think her generation today knows how to talk to the previous ones?
“I don’t think so, and that is a big problem for society. Communication doesn’t happen, and in my view the problem starts in the family. Last summer I worked at a children’s camp and saw how often kids don’t feel comfortable sharing their problems and worries with their parents, because the parents somehow hold them back. Not that they are bad parents or treat them badly, but somehow they belittle their problems because they are children. That is exactly what often puts up walls that keep people from opening up. Communication, I think, is something extremely important for the bond between a child and a parent, and it helps with many other things in later life too—with socializing, with people, with friends.”
The Room in You
Through her lens Sofia captures many young people who this very fall will leave their rooms to fly out into the wide world and continue their education. “Many of them will part with their families and their homes, and for them this room will no longer be what it has been until now. And I’m glad I managed to do this for them—so that years from now they can see themselves from this point of view.”
“We spend time in our rooms, and they become a reflection of our true nature. Holding our memories, our individuality and our desires, they help us discover who we really are,” says Sofia.
Yes, we are all in a hurry. All of us faster and faster, yet we keep changing, we grow all our lives. And still, some things stay the same. Our childhood room, for instance, even if we come back a decade later. Or the quiet murmur of life that sends the next young ones off in flight. After that, all we can do is hope, believe in them, watch them fly… And try to talk to each other.
The exhibition runs until August 30, 2022. You can see it at the UniCredit Studio gallery (Sofia, 7 Sveta Nedelya Square).
